Itz Shooow Tiiime!! Swizz Beatz, Fabolous and Cassidy…

News

Tue, 29 May, 2007

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“Showww tiiime!” Swizz Beatz, Fabolous and Cassidy have a video for their “Summer Jam Warm-Up Freestyle,” and in it, you see all three in the lab one night, rapping the record. What nobody knows is that the very next day, Swizzy had to go the hospital. He came down with meningitis.

“I’m just f—ing happy to be feeling better again,” Swizzy said last week. “I was down. I’m in the crib on chill.”

Swizz says his challenging work schedule pushed him to a breaking point. When you have 50 Cent, Madonna, Chris Brown and Usher all waiting in line for tracks, you don’t exactly have time for rest.

“I [was] up for four days straight,” he said of what caused the illness. “I was paralyzed from my legs down. I was twisted. I was f—ed up! … N—as call me ‘The Monster’ because how I work in the studio so hard. I can’t do it no more. I gotta be on the schedule but still be able to do what I have to do. I just gotta invest in my health right now. That day I went in the hospital changed my whole life. I could have came out in a wheelchair.”

As it turns out, just two weeks ago, Swizz was on Hot 97 talking to host Angie Martinez about his sleep depravation, and she warned him that lack of rest would send him straight to the hospital.

“That day when we was in the studio, I was exhausted,” he added. “My immune system was low from not eating right. But I wasn’t paying no attention. I’m going to the crib and I had a hard time getting out of my truck. I get out of the seat and I’m damn near limping. I was barely making it up my steps. I damn near fell in the bed and my wife was like, ‘You have to go to the doctor immediately.’ They had to carry me downstairs … got to the hospital, they stuck a needle in my spine. I escaped some sh–. That changed my life, trust me. I’m happy to be able to run around with my son. Imagine I couldn’t even run around with my kids? God gave me one more chance to get my sh– right.”

Swizz was hospitalized for four days and is now at home resting until Friday, when he’s hoping to begin production on a new video that mostly focuses on his next single, “Here Comes Big Money” with Kanye West. We will get a taste of “Money in the Bank” at the beginning of the clip, though.

“I just want another look,” he explained. “I want three solid looks. Put ‘Money in the Bank’ in the beginning of the video and Kanye will be like, ‘I like that joint but the joint we got together, that’s gonna put big money in the bank.’ ”

Originally Swizz was against having too many guest spots on his album, but when you have Kanye offering a cameo, what are you gonna do?

“Kanye went out his way to give me a verse,” Beatz said. “He called me about it. I didn’t have to bug him. It was cool. [Turning him down,] I think that would have been rude. If Coldplay could have been on the album, Kanye could be on the album. I’m honored to know he felt my sh– is hot to even wanna rock with me like that. He could have made it competition, but he’s like, ‘Yo, Swizzy, I got you, let’s get ’em.’ ”

Swizz is among the array of performers scheduled to hit Giants Stadium Sunday at Hot 97’s Summer Jam concert. The event is notorious for all the guest acts that always seem to pop up, but Swizz says he wants to just keep it him. He could be bluffing, though.

“One Man Band Man, that’s it,” he said. “They expecting me to bring this one and that one. I’m just gonna do me. Let everybody else bring everybody. I’m just trying to raise the bar, point blank.”

The “Summer Jam Warm-Up Freestyle” was just a few friends showing solidarity, he said.

“We basically was in the studio and I told Fab, ‘Let’s do a freestyle,’ ” he recalled. ” ‘You got the hottest record in New York. I got a hot record too.’ New York n—as don’t get along. I’m like, ‘Yo, we need to switch it up a little bit.’ Then Cass came in the studio too. [For the video] my engineer already had some footage of me in Miami in the Super America car. He pieced that sh– up right quick and we had fun with it.”

By the time you read this, Swizz has probably already leaked Cassidy’s first single, “Drink, Two Step.”